Luke 16:8

16:8 The ¹  master commended the dishonest ²  manager because he acted shrewdly. ³  For the people ⁴  of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their contemporaries ⁵  than the people ⁶  of light.

John 8:23

8:23 Jesus replied, ⁷  “You people ⁸  are from below; I am from above. You people are from this world; I am not from this world.

John 15:19

15:19 If you belonged to the world, ⁹  the world would love you as its own. ¹⁰  However, because you do not belong to the world, ¹¹  but I chose you out of the world, for this reason ¹²  the world hates you. ¹³ 

John 17:14

17:14 I have given them your word, ¹⁴  and the world has hated them, because they do not belong to the world, ¹⁵  just as I do not belong to the world. ¹⁶ 

John 17:1

Jesus Prays for the Father to Glorify Him

17:1 When Jesus had finished saying these things, he looked upward ¹⁷  to heaven ¹⁸  and said, “Father, the time ¹⁹  has come. Glorify your Son, so that your ²⁰  Son may glorify you –

John 4:4-5

Conversation With a Samaritan Woman

4:4 But he had ²¹  to pass through Samaria. ²²  4:5 Now he came to a Samaritan town ²³  called Sychar, ²⁴  near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ²⁵ 

[16:8]  ¹ tn Grk “And the.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[16:8]  ² sn Is the manager dishonest because of what he just did? Or is it a reference to what he had done earlier, described in v. 1? This is a difficult question, but it seems unlikely that the master, having fired the man for prior dishonesty, would now commend those same actions. It would also be unusual for Jesus to make that point of the story the example. Thus it is more likely the reference to dishonesty goes back to the earliest events, while the commendation is for the cleverness of the former manager reflected in vv. 5-7.

[16:8]  ³ sn Where this parable ends is debated: Does it conclude with v. 7, after v. 8a, after v. 8b, or after v. 9? Verse 8a looks as if it is still part of the story, with its clear reference to the manager, while 8b looks like Jesus’ application, since its remarks are more general. So it is most likely the parable stops after v. 8a.

[16:8]  ⁴ tn Grk “sons” (an idiom).

[16:8]  ⁵ tn Grk “with their own generation.”

[16:8]  ⁶ tn Grk “sons.” Here the phrase “sons of light” is a reference to the righteous. The point is that those of the world often think ahead about consequences better than the righteous do.

[8:23]  ⁷ tn Grk “And he said to them.”

[8:23]  ⁸ tn The word “people” is supplied in English to clarify the plural Greek pronoun and verb.

[15:19]  ⁹ tn Grk “if you were of the world.”

[15:19]  ¹⁰ tn The words “you as” are not in the original but are supplied for clarity.

[15:19]  ¹¹ tn Grk “because you are not of the world.”

[15:19]  ¹² tn Or “world, therefore.”

[15:19]  ¹³ sn I chose you out of the world…the world hates you. Two themes are brought together here. In 8:23 Jesus had distinguished himself from the world in addressing his Jewish opponents: “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.” In 15:16 Jesus told the disciples “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you.” Now Jesus has united these two ideas as he informs the disciples that he has chosen them out of the world. While the disciples will still be “in” the world after Jesus has departed, they will not belong to it, and Jesus prays later in John 17:15-16 to the Father, “I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The same theme also occurs in 1 John 4:5-6: “They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us.” Thus the basic reason why the world hates the disciples (as it hated Jesus before them) is because they are not of the world. They are born from above, and are not of the world. For this reason the world hates them.

[17:14]  ¹⁴ tn Or “your message.”

[17:14]  ¹⁵ tn Grk “because they are not of the world.”

[17:14]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “just as I am not of the world.”

[17:1]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “he raised his eyes” (an idiom).

[17:1]  ¹⁸ tn Or “to the sky.” The Greek word οὐρανός (ouranos) may be translated “sky” or “heaven” depending on the context.

[17:1]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “the hour.”

[17:1]  ²⁰ tc The better witnesses (א B C* W 0109 0301) have “the Son” (ὁ υἱός, Jo Juios) here, while the majority (C³ L Ψ Ë¹³ 33 Ï) read “your Son also” (καὶ ὁ υἱὸς σου, kai Jo Juio" sou), or “your Son” (ὁ υἱὸς σου; A D Θ 0250 1 579 pc lat sy); the second corrector of C has καὶ ὁ υἱός (“the Son also”). The longer readings appear to be predictable scribal expansions and as such should be considered secondary.

[4:4]  ²¹ sn Travel through Samaria was not geographically necessary; the normal route for Jews ran up the east side of the Jordan River (Transjordan). Although some take the impersonal verb had to (δεῖ, dei) here to indicate logical necessity only, normally in John’s Gospel its use involves God’s will or plan (3:7, 3:14, 3:30, 4:4, 4:20, 4:24, 9:4, 10:16, 12:34, 20:9).

[4:4]  ²² sn Samaria. The Samaritans were descendants of 2 groups: (1) The remnant of native Israelites who were not deported after the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 722 b.c.; (2) Foreign colonists brought in from Babylonia and Media by the Assyrian conquerors to settle the land with inhabitants who would be loyal to Assyria. There was theological opposition between the Samaritans and the Jews because the former refused to worship in Jerusalem. After the exile the Samaritans put obstacles in the way of the Jewish restoration of Jerusalem, and in the 2nd century b.c. the Samaritans helped the Syrians in their wars against the Jews. In 128 b.c. the Jewish high priest retaliated and burned the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim.

[4:5]  ²³ tn Grk “town of Samaria.” The noun Σαμαρείας (Samareias) has been translated as an attributive genitive.

[4:5]  ²⁴ sn Sychar was somewhere in the vicinity of Shechem, possibly the village of Askar, 1.5 km northeast of Jacob’s well.

[4:5]  ²⁵ sn Perhaps referred to in Gen 48:22.